>My marginal contribution to maritime historian Joan Druett’s book Tupaia: Captain Cook’s Polynesian Navigator was to comment at a dinner table that the Tahitian chief’s considerable part in the development of New Zealand was hardly acknowledged. The observation was made as I talked about how often, in the course of a history of New Zealand I am writing, I had to think in a different cultural context from my own.

>Histories of Pacific exploration focus on Cook, relegating Tupaia to a minor role. Yet without him, Cook’s visit to New Zealand would have been much less enlightening, for despite the Maori’s ancestors having left central Polynesia 500 years earlier, Tupaia was able to engage with them in language and cultural terms.

>Much of what Cook tells us was learnt from Tupaia. Yet whereas Cook rightly appears in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, there is no entry for Tupaia. The dictionary records the exploration of the Pacific through European eyes.
>It happens all the time. A frequent example, with which we titillate students, is the early sexual encounters between the sailors and the natives. Our accounts are written as if they involve prostitution, although the Polynesians had no such notion. (Anne Salmond’s Aphrodite’s Island provides a balanced view.) But consider the following more prosaic example.
>The eminent anthropologist Elsdon Best reports, “Nicholas, who sojourned in the Bay of Islands district in 1815 … [spoke] of the natives being eager to exchange a 10lb fish for a ten penny nail (iron spike)”. Many – not Best – would see this as evidence of a naive Maori being gulled by a sophisticated European to exchange something almost worthless for something of considerable value.
>But the Maori would have seen the value imbalance the other way around. As part of a normal day’s catch, the fish probably took minutes to land. A metal implement would be more efficient – albeit possibly less aesthetically pleasing – than a stone one, whose production took many days. Exchange involves two sides – two perceptions.
>One of our most iconic images of early exchange is a drawing by Tupaia. (There was no such painting tradition in Polynesia, but Tupaia was exceptionally able, taking over the equipment of an artist who died on the ship.) It shows an interaction between a Maori in a cloak and a British officer. The officer is accepting a crayfish, but what is being offered? It is usual to assume it was a nail, for we know Polynesians greatly prized them. However, closer inspection shows it is a piece of tapa cloth.
>When the Endeavour’s officers first offered nails to Maori in the waka that went up to the ship, the Maori declined because they did not know what metals were. They were a neolithic (stone-based agricultural) people. But they accepted the crew’s offers of tapa cloth with alacrity, offering fish in return. (What they did with it, we don’t know, but I suspect not a few wahine were impressed that evening.) Maori soon learnt the value of metals, and they became the basis of exchange with the crew before Cook left New Zealand.
>He sailed on to Australia, but because Tupaia knew as little of the Aboriginal languages as did the sailors, Cook’s anthropological observations are not nearly as acute; an indication of how little he would have learnt about Maori had Tupaia not been with him.
>If it is a challenge to see events through the eyes of other cultures, it can also be difficult to view them as they were seen at the time. I have the same trouble writing about 19th-century settlers, or even mid-20th-century New Zealand, just as I do when attempting to interpret history through Maori eyes. As I go into the period after which I was born, I find myself continually having to re-evaluate what was happening in my own life.
>Such are the matters historians discuss at dinner. The day after hearing my Tupaia comment, Druett took herself down to the Alexander Turnbull Library, looked at its documentary evidence about Tupaia and decided there was a good story to be told. As we say, the rest is history – in this case a very readable and enlightening history of a great Polynesian.
>Listener: 7 January, 2012.
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>Keywords: Maori; Political Economy & History;
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>My marginal contribution to maritime historian Joan Druett’s book Tupaia: Captain Cook’s Polynesian Navigator was to comment at a dinner table that the Tahitian chief’s considerable part in the development of New Zealand was hardly acknowledged. The observation was made as I talked about how often, in the course of a history of New Zealand I am writing, I had to think in a different cultural context from my own.
>
>Histories of Pacific exploration focus on Cook, relegating Tupaia to a minor role. Yet without him, Cook’s visit to New Zealand would have been much less enlightening, for despite the Maori’s ancestors having left central Polynesia 500 years earlier, Tupaia was able to engage with them in language and cultural terms.
>
>Much of what Cook tells us was learnt from Tupaia. Yet whereas Cook rightly appears in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, there is no entry for Tupaia. The dictionary records the exploration of the Pacific through European eyes.
>
>It happens all the time. A frequent example, with which we titillate students, is the early sexual encounters between the sailors and the natives. Our accounts are written as if they involve prostitution, although the Polynesians had no such notion. (Anne Salmond’s Aphrodite’s Island provides a balanced view.) But consider the following more prosaic example.
>
>The eminent anthropologist Elsdon Best reports, “Nicholas, who sojourned in the Bay of Islands district in 1815 … [spoke] of the natives being eager to exchange a 10lb fish for a ten penny nail (iron spike)”. Many – not Best – would see this as evidence of a naive Maori being gulled by a sophisticated European to exchange something almost worthless for something of considerable value.
>
>But the Maori would have seen the value imbalance the other way around. As part of a normal day’s catch, the fish probably took minutes to land. A metal implement would be more efficient – albeit possibly less aesthetically pleasing – than a stone one, whose production took many days. Exchange involves two sides – two perceptions.
>
>One of our most iconic images of early exchange is a drawing by Tupaia. (There was no such painting tradition in Polynesia, but Tupaia was exceptionally able, taking over the equipment of an artist who died on the ship.) It shows an interaction between a Maori in a cloak and a British officer. The officer is accepting a crayfish, but what is being offered? It is usual to assume it was a nail, for we know Polynesians greatly prized them. However, closer inspection shows it is a piece of tapa cloth.
>
>When the Endeavour’s officers first offered nails to Maori in the waka that went up to the ship, the Maori declined because they did not know what metals were. They were a neolithic (stone-based agricultural) people. But they accepted the crew’s offers of tapa cloth with alacrity, offering fish in return. (What they did with it, we don’t know, but I suspect not a few wahine were impressed that evening.) Maori soon learnt the value of metals, and they became the basis of exchange with the crew before Cook left New Zealand.
>
>He sailed on to Australia, but because Tupaia knew as little of the Aboriginal languages as did the sailors, Cook’s anthropological observations are not nearly as acute; an indication of how little he would have learnt about Maori had Tupaia not been with him.
>
>If it is a challenge to see events through the eyes of other cultures, it can also be difficult to view them as they were seen at the time. I have the same trouble writing about 19th-century settlers, or even mid-20th-century New Zealand, just as I do when attempting to interpret history through Maori eyes. As I go into the period after which I was born, I find myself continually having to re-evaluate what was happening in my own life.
>
>Such are the matters historians discuss at dinner. The day after hearing my Tupaia comment, Druett took herself down to the Alexander Turnbull Library, looked at its documentary evidence about Tupaia and decided there was a good story to be told. As we say, the rest is history – in this case a very readable and enlightening history of a great Polynesian.